Another step closer to eventually free transfers 🚀

Bence Töreky

Transfers are now cheaper in and out of Europe. As of 3rd of August 2021 customers making low cost transfers to and from the following countries in Europe are now paying 16% less on average for their transfers.

You will now pay lower fees when:

Making a transfer from:

  • Croatian Kuna
  • Swedish Krone
  • and Danish Krone

Making a transfer to:

  • Czech Korona
  • Russian Rubles
  • and Hungarian Forints

Check how much you will save on your next transfer here.

For instance:

Sending € 500 toOld feeNew feeDrop
CZK3.132.5917.25%
RUB6.055.823.80%
HUF3.062.779.48%
Sending € 500 fromOld feeNew feeDrop
HRK37.0524.6433.50%
SEK28.5527.752.80%
DKK18.1617.792.04%

What helped us to make transfers cheaper recently

Cost of operations

Our long term plan is, of course, to automate as much of our operations as possible to make sure we can move more payments for more and more people and businesses.

As such we usually launch new features and routes in ways that still require some level of manual processing, and then keep automating and improving our internal processes as we grow.

In the last twelve months we have built tools and improved automation for our Payment Operations teams in Central and Eastern Europe. We have also integrated with new partners (e.g. for Russian Rubles) and invested into improving our automated processing flows with existing partners (e.g.: Polish Zloty).

FX a.k.a. Foreign Exchange

By guaranteeing our customers mid-market rates practically what happens is that we are exposed to the risk of exchange rate fluctuations for the time period until your funds arrive to our accounts. This period may take from a few seconds up to multiple days (e.g.: a transfer set up over a banking holiday).

Over the last year and a half we have experienced extreme volatility in foreign exchange rate costs:

When COVID hit, our immediate action to avoid drastic price increases was to review the time periods for which we offer guaranteed rates. We did this by digging into our transactional data to re-define realistic timelines for customers' funds to get to us for every currency in Europe. For you, as a customer, this means that we have adjusted the guaranteed rate periods to account for local market characteristics.

For currencies where instant low cost transfers (e.g. HUF) are the market norm we have reduced the fixed rate periods. On the other hand, for currencies where we have seen significant demand for transfers setup over the weekends, we have adjusted the fixed rate periods to make sure you don’t lose your guaranteed rate before your funds get to us on Monday. 🙂

Spreads a.k.a. markup on buying foreign currency

We have routes where volumes tend to balance out both ways over time, hence we barely ever need to buy currency from our partners. This is great news not only for us, but also for you as a customer as it allows us to guarantee mid-market rates at lower cost.

Unfortunately there are routes that we don’t yet support both ways. In these cases we need to buy currency from partners - usually banks - who charge a markup on the mid market rates when selling us foreign currency. Examples from Central and Eastern Europe would be Russian Rubles or Ukrainian Hrivna.

There are a few levers we can pull to lower this cost, such as:

  1. We regularly review our agreements with trading partners to align pricing with increased volumes.
  2. We establish new partnerships with more favourable commercials - and tech - and then pass on the savings to you.
  3. We launch new currency routes based on customer demand allowing us to reduce the amount of foreign currency we need to buy.

Bank fees

Despite our best efforts to disrupt the industry, fees paid to our banking partners are still the most significant single cost item for many currency routes. Our regional Banking teams are committed to finding and partnering with banks across the globe who are motivated to join us on our Mission to empower customers to move their funds across borders conveniently.

For example when we integrate new payment methods or connect directly with local payment schemes - as we did in September 2020 in Hungary - we tend to lower our cost basis and unlock faster payment rails making our processes more efficient as well as our product cheaper and faster for our customers.

Most recently we have launched a new partnership with a Russian bank with more favourable commercial terms as well as better tech allowing us to start reducing our fees for sending to Rubles. Stay tuned for what is next. 😉

Step by step progress on free transfers

As a Mission driven company we are working on making cross border transfers instant, transparent, convenient and eventually free. As such our Product teams are rigorously looking for and acting on improvement opportunities allowing our customers to benefit from our progress on this Mission.

Generally speaking, price and speed improvements are enabled by the growing number of customers who switch from traditional banks and money transfer services to Wise. As we scale our costs and improve on operational efficiency we can then pass on these savings to you. Our efforts over the last couple of quarters in Europe are now paying off and as always, we made sure to pass on these savings to you by reducing our fees:


*Please see terms of use and product availability for your region or visit Wise fees and pricing for the most up to date pricing and fee information.

This publication is provided for general information purposes and does not constitute legal, tax or other professional advice from Wise Payments Limited or its subsidiaries and its affiliates, and it is not intended as a substitute for obtaining advice from a financial advisor or any other professional.

We make no representations, warranties or guarantees, whether expressed or implied, that the content in the publication is accurate, complete or up to date.

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